Sales of mobile phones around the world fell last year for the first time since 2009 as consumers shunned cheaper feature phones, research company Gartner said on Wednesday.

But smartphone sales, a category dominated by Samsung and Apple, continued to rise, Gartner said, and the higher-end devices would account for more than half the market for the first time this year. In the fourth quarter alone, Apple and Samsung accounted for 52% of smartphone sales, up from 46% in the third quarter.

BlackBerry, which recently changed its name from Research In Motion Ltd., saw its handset sales decline 33.6% in 2012 from a year earlier. In the smartphone operating system market, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company was down 44.4% in the fourth quarter of 2012.